Othering Occupy: Against the Rhetoric of Fear

<em>On the anniversary of the Occupy movement, two speakers squared off to debate what tactics are legitimate and effective for bringing about social change, and who gets to define the movement’s goals. The debate exposed assumptions about power and safety, revealing how these concepts are framed differently in the language of the mainstream than of the disenfranchised. Facing these controversies, we must find a way past the fears that would fracture this movement to embrace the irrational, the damaged, and the vulnerable into a network of support.</em></td><td><img title="aka the march of the damaged" src="http://anarchistnews.org/files/pictures/2012/womenbush.jpg"></td></tr></...
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The most fascinating thing about the Occupy movement is its bizarre diversity—the broad sweep of humanity who poured into the encampments, sleeping, eating and working side by side for months. Drawn together by shared discontent—but not necessarily a shared vision for the future—Occupiers in most cities often found themselves butting heads with people they would never have chosen to organize or live with, people who seemed to be messing up this golden opportunity for real change. Whether they were Ron Paul supporters, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, those struggling with addiction or mental illness, black-clad anarchists, militant people of color, or middle-class journalists, many occupiers eventually wanted to draw a line around “us” and “the other” in an attempt to define who Occupy really was. Surmounting all these factions was the rallying cry, “We are the 99%”—a hopeful, if simplistic, call for unity. On the streets, we experienced Occupy as a social experiment, learning to organize by navigating difference—general assemblies at their best gave marginalized people a voice in a shared process of creating and defending a commons. But the mostly middle-class journalists and writers within the movement had the chance to publicly frame Occupy, and some chose to define it as a movement of people a lot like them.

This was the crux of Chris Hedges’ argument in his recent debate with B. Traven of the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers’ Collective about tactics, non-violence, and legitimacy; Hedges repeatedly called for Occupy to be a “mainstream movement.” While never explicitly defining who fell outside that mainstream, he implied that the fringes of society harbor monsters: proto-fascist militias, agents provocateurs, hyper-masculine individualists who could bring the full force of the State on the heads of the innocent. A journalist who has covered many wars and uprisings, Hedges continually digressed into cataloging atrocities he’s witnessed and warning of the terrible power of the State. He may have wanted to emphasize the gravity of our situation, but what I saw was a man paralyzed by fear, grasping for one shining and simple solution to take us out of the war zone and into safety. While his goals may be different, his rhetoric is not too far from the fearmongering mainstream media outlets engage in—encouraging us to fear each other (or the most disenfranchised and desperate amongst us) rather than the powers that keep us oppressed.

I agree that our culture’s shadow side is one of dehumanizing violence; many of us have experienced it firsthand and bear the scars and the psychological fallout—being quicker to attack or readier to hide. But I would argue that it does not arise in greater numbers or ferocity on the fringes of society—merely that we have been taught to “see” violence there and ignore it elsewhere, a point B. Traven elaborated in one of the few moments of the debate that directly touched on the question of how we define violence, and how a seemingly semantic argument has grave implications for the disenfranchised.

As A. K. Thompson wrote in anticipation of the debate, “the proponents of nonviolence assert the strategic and ethical superiority of their position without ever acknowledging the State violence that underwrites it.”[i] This is not to defend the irresponsible use of force, or to minimize the real fear that can arise at protests when people who aren’t expecting property destruction feel caught in the crossfire. It’s easy to understand why nonviolent protesters feel threatened by these acts.

My own beliefs as an activist were originally much more in line with Hedges’. Partially in response to generations of violence in my own family, I converted to Buddhism as a teenager and devoutly practiced ahimsa, the doctrine of nonviolence. When I first attended mass demonstrations in 1999 I considered myself a pacifist. I was initially unimpressed with the masked anarchists I saw overturning dumpsters and setting them on fire—they seemed juvenile and irrelevant. I pathologized them, as I’d been taught, as ignorant and violent people. The ensuing years of activism have refined my understanding of diverse tactics—I learned the less public history of forceful struggles that have accompanied social change in this country, from the striking miners of Blair Mountain to the armed Black Panthers and the Oscar Grant uprisings, and I became close friends with a range of people whose tactics I don’t always agree with and who take risks I’d never choose to take. People who Chris Hedges would consider outsiders and parasites on the mainstream movement, I’m proud to know as loyal friends and passionate activists.

What I hope Hedges took away from this debate is that the mass movement he’s imagining will depend on a painfully wide coalition. We’ll need all of us, damaged as we are, who care enough to fight. This includes masked kids who occasionally escalate conflict unwisely, and it includes middle-aged journalists who slip up and dehumanize potential allies when they disagree with their tactics. It could include those in the “mainstream” that Hedges is anxious not to alienate—but they’re going to have to embrace those of us who occupy the fringes, with as much compassion and willingness to learn as we will need in learning to work with them. I imagine that Hedges believes we need the mainstream because they hold the most social power—but those who hold power often fear losing it too much to join an uprising, at least until their power slips. Even as the middle classes are slipping into poverty, most of them haven’t abandoned their sense of entitlement to a higher place in society than those who have historically been on the fringes. Nor have they overcome their fear of people with different ideas about how to effect change.

Which leads to the most interesting area of this debate: how do we overcome our fear—of each other and of the State—and become capable of tremendous collective courage? Hedges clearly fears Black Bloc tactics. During the debate he backed down from his original stance to asking only that there be a proper “time and place” for such tactics. His argument, that a diversity of tactics gives the police “an excuse” to attack the crowd, is a familiar one which always reminds me of the fractured logic of hostages or abusive families. When there is someone with disproportionate power to hurt many of us, we are far more likely to scapegoat troublemakers in our midst as the ones who “cause” those in power to act violently and irrationally. When we act to preserve ourselves at the expense of others we have begun to believe the logic of our oppressors; we may strive our entire lives to be good enough for them not to hurt us. Or, in the case of proponents of nonviolence, good enough that others will see our innocence as they hurt us. It’s this troubling moralism that allows our culture to demonize and condemn so many who fight to defend themselves. The same logic used to delegitimize Black Bloc tactics has been instrumental in criminalizing the most vulnerable among us who rise up to defend themselves. CeCe McDonald, a trans woman currently serving time for defending herself and her friends against a violent assault, is one example of a brave woman whose marginal social status left her vulnerable to being criminalized by the State.[ii]

As Traven concluded, the question is not whether people are going to resist with force, but “what happens when they revolt. If there is no movement for them to participate in, they’re going to act out in isolation. They’re going to throw their lives away.” Isolation is the most toxic condition of our times, and the state enforces it wherever it can. The various forms of oppressive violence in our culture—patriarchy, racism, and transphobia, to name a few—foster distrust and fear amongst us. Only when we can face the violence we’ve internalized, and neutralize the narratives of fear that surround us, will we begin to feel the power we wield together. Only when we grow sick of othering and excising will we recognize that compassion, solidarity, and courage are not exclusively tied to one narrow moralism.

On S17 thousands gathered at 4 meetups and marched to wall st whr they shut down the financial district for 3 hours, thr were 180 arrests. there was graffiti painted around tht area and some bottles thrown at pigs. Everyone regrouped at the bull and attempted to seige it. Then everyone marched to battery park at the same time people gathered at zuccotti. A short meeting, then people went civilian and went to zuccotti and dozens of small groups attacked bank lobbies and 3 main large groups shut down the "global financial center" home to many banks. Marches continued throughout the day then ppl rested in the park. Large groups of ppl wanted to march, but mant loud annoying organizers were scared, so we kept zuccotti through the night.

Furthermore capitalism doesn't equal the Stock Exchange, which can be closed for days on end without capitalism being hurt by it. *Factories,* remember those? Were any factories shut down? No? MEGA FAIL.

Ah, that's right. Capitalism is *just* factories. Not the trucks or boats or docks which move the stuff produced in them, not the banks which circulate the money they require, not the stores which sell what they produce, and not the prisons which ensure that people don't steal the shit that's made in the factories.

Even during the period when there were still lots of factories in the US, this was a stupid position. Now it's just inexcusable.

I agree! And of all these things you mention, you know *the trucks or boats or docks which move the stuff produced in them [...] the banks which circulate the money they require, [...] the stores which sell what they produce, and [..] the prisons which ensure that people don't steal the shit that's made in the factories* OWS is only concerned with a single one of them: the banks! Inexcusable is right right right.

It implies that 'the working class' does all the work, while the bourgeoisie just sits there and reaps the rewards without working themselves. Because this way of looking at society combined itself with the protestant work ethic in the minds of most radicals, work was something to be proud of. The ruling class was despised because they didn't work, while the working class was noble because they produced the wealth of the world.

While there still is 'old money' that doesn't work, many rich people nowadays end up spending from 40-80 hours a week working; their work involving management, finance, and adminstration; aka oppressing workers, consumers, the natural world, etc.

Now it's not a question of 'who does the work,' it's 'who has the most to lose from the system's destruction'. I think the term 'proletariat' still applies to our society, as the May 68 graffiti describes it as 'anyone who doesn't have any power and knows it.' But as a word to describe this mythical self-conscious state of the working class, it's been outdated for half a century.

That's quite true, most rich people these days have a peasant's eagerness to acquire wealth, while the old aristocracy didn't really bother, they had mythologies to produce class distinction and a division of labour.

This is spot on: *I think the term 'proletariat' still applies to our society, as the May 68 graffiti describes it as 'anyone who doesn't have any power [over his or her own life] and knows it.'* At least someone (someone other than me, that is) gets it!

With this reasoning it would be better to argue against using the term "Working Class" than "Proletariat" because the etymological significance of "proletarian" is closer to describing a person holding no privateproperty who has no value to the ruling class other than their ability to spawn more subjects. This class of people clearly still exists. The Bourgeoisie of course are Property Owners and Bosses, a class of people which also clearly exist as a distinct class. There's nothing antiquated about these terms and it's usually the middle-class and petit bourgeois "radical" liberals that try to claim that the concept is outmoded because they are trying to brush off the fact that they enjoy a privileged status which derives from the exploitation of proletarians and are therefore neither revolutionaries nor to be taken seriously by actual proletarian and lumpen revolutionaries.

there is a clear case for new vocabulary and not just with respect to ‘class’. the term ‘protest’ is absurd, and ‘non-violent protest’ is doubly absurd.

our natural condition is free association. sure the Italian colonizers called Omar Mukhtar a ‘rebel’ but that is colonizer-speak. why would a free person use colonizer-speak on himself? .... “If you please, ... I would like to protest having been forcefully emprisoned and the common living space I reside in having been expropriated by force by my captors. If it would be possible, I would like to apply for a permit to walk through the city to illustrate my displeasure with this turn of events.”

no one is a free person in a sovereign state. the sovereign state is set up by powerful bullies to make the norm imprisonment, and then start giving out privileges to ‘trustees’. there are different levels of trustees in the prison. this is where the notion of ‘classes’ comes from. the prison guards ensure that the inmates do nothing to break down the trustee hierarchy.

how could you have a bourgeoisie in a freely associating social dynamic? was there a bourgeoisie in the bedouin tribes? a bourgeoisie whose properties and privileges were protected by a supreme central authority and its police and military?

no way.

in order to have a bourgeoisie, you have to impose the norm of imprisonment and start giving trustee vouchers to the inmates based on ‘der Führer-Prinzip’. these vouchers come in the form of property ownership certificates, the property having been first stolen/expropriated by the central coordinating committee of the prison-state.

the debate over non-violent and violent protest is colonizer-speak since the concept of ‘protest’ under the prevailing circumstances is absurd.

Omar Mukhtar was 73 when the colonizers hanged him in front of one of the concentration camps they had put his Bedouin people in [30-50 percent of them died in these camps]. Mussolini and the colonial government said that Mukhtar was a ‘rebel’. Omar said that they were سخيف الفاشيين

I don't give a fuck which terms you use. All I care about is the constant stream of self-congratulatory bullshit that comes from OWS these days, especially concerning the media spectacle of 17 September. And in the case above, that bullshit concerned blocking *workers* from going to their jobs, as if *the super-rich* give a shit about the minor conveniences caused to their drones, which they don't.

You shut down the computers inside them, but not the flows of information that make those computers necessary. Business went on as usual. You shut down the flows of information that make those computers necessary, but you did nothing to deal with semiocapital in general. Business went on as usual. You dealt with semiocapital in general, but you failed to directly attack the conditions that make semiocapital and its attendant affects possible and desirable. Business went on as usual. You attacked the conditions that make semiocapital and its attendant affects possible and desirable, but you neglected the subj...

I'm all for diversity, but also, sadly, the most ANNOYING thing about the Occupy movement is its bizarre diversity.

I wish this wasn't the case but in my city this diversity largely manifested itself as hemp-sandle wearing chemtrail wingnuts and people who think there's some progressive statement to be made by dressing up like Hitler...

OWS was so weak, that I tend to think it was one of those things that COINTELPRO let happen. They threw us a few pieces of bread to see who would show up and where they would take it.
The funny thing about the above statement is that I am not a conspiracy theory clown, and normally find those pretty shallow. But that's where we're at now, I guess.

But that's conspiracy theory. You just assumed that the Almighty State is so omnipotent and the establishment vastly competent that they now have the power to "let us" make public

If there was a conspiracy, it came from the liberal socialists (and the phony anarchists) who were behind Occupy from day one. Of course undercovers from the police an possibly secret service were involved into most Occupies. It's no conspiracy theory but a known fact to many. But I don't see how it had to do with the actual organizing... it was just to control, eventually crush this non-action.

Occupy was a spectacular, self-serving tactic. A sad example of making a tactic into a strategy, and contemplating the resulting emptiness and "cul-de-sac".

We cared too much about Occupy I think... anarchy goes far beyond that liberal petit-bourgeois crap.

Anyone find it interesting that there was almost no mainstream coverage of the militancy that allegedly took place in NYC? The old narrative of the last decade would have fetishized the arrests and (relatively minor) attacks on the pigs (if they happened, I don't know) but as another poster said, I couldn't find hardly any coverage of anything that wasn't peaceful liberal protest but some folks here claim shit went down ... so what's with the gap?

Was the militancy at the demos totally weak and overblown or is it a media blackout because the eye of sauron blinked for fear of giving the kiddies more ideas?

as an arrested member of mondays events fuck the naysayers we are doing somthing i didnt go to jail for nothin and neither did the others in my holding cell the liberals are there but now there's more radicals then before i think we just need to get organized if a black bloc happened i dont think wed be talking about jail and dont ask me specifics on my
case please i will not put it on the web

Good. But many were under the impression that there was to be a real black bloc, so there wasn't. I suppose that's where the disappointment comes from. Still there's been Wall Street blockades, and a railroad was sabotaged... these are good for starters, I suppose.

Hedges’ attack on the black bloc is another sign that ‘political correctness’ is hijacking our social dynamic. His reaction is like the reaction to Yunel Escobar’s ambiguous words in his eyeblack, or the action of Red Guards in Mao’s cultural revolution in stripping women of their panties if they were red [an offense to the sacred colour].

Should we be searching for an ‘innate offensiveness’ in ‘what things-do’? Or should we be looking BEYOND ‘what things do’ for the deeper reality; i.e. the ‘transformation’ of our living space? There is a certain ‘purificationism’ in managing dynamics on the basis of the ‘political correctness’ of ‘what things do’.

In the story of Moses on the mount, we are told that “God wanted to instruct the people on how to live. By following His rules they would have less sadness in their lives. God just wanted to protect the people from suffering”.

But in a capitalist society, ‘business’ of all sorts not only gets a ‘political correctness’ stamp-of-approval, it gets respect. Of course, this focus on ‘what things do’ is not the ‘real story’ since we live within a continually transforming relational space and the physical reality is never in terms of ‘what things do’ but is in terms of how our continually transforming living space continues to transform given some new ‘what things do’ activities within it.

Isn’t it about time we started ‘getting real’ and looking at ‘transformation’ of our living space instead of at ‘what things do’?

Hedges’ attack that orients to the ‘what things do’ of the black bloc seems to be a political correctness based in ‘purificationism’ as might be expected from someone who is a Doctor of Divinity.

But how far can we take the ‘purificationist’ approach, and the political correctness that it breeds? Isn’t that what is getting society into trouble in the first place?

Western civilization is a civilization that believes that the world turns on the basis of ‘what things do’. We look right on through the ‘transformation’ that we are sitting in the middle of and we see, instead, ‘what things do’. As McLuhan said, we are more focused on whether the new factory in our region is turning out Cadillacs or Cornflakes while the transformation of our relations with one and other and our living space, the physically real dynamic [Mach] ‘totally eludes us’. As I sit at one of the tables in my mom&pop truckstop cafe, sip my coffee and look across the fields at the huge Cadillac factory operation, .... whoops, I just noticed something going on literally ‘behind my back’. They just laid some new pavement and shifted the highway a mile to the north to allow for expansion of the industrial facilities. I am no longer on the highway. The insiders have already bought up all the land along the new highway. Fuck!

Transformation is the real physical dynamic. There is no such thing in physical reality as ‘what things do’. Such imagery is ‘appearances’, ‘schaumkommen’, ‘total Fiktion’.

When we see stars moving, we don’t think --- ‘relational transformation’--- we think of ‘what stars as things-in-themselves are doing’ as if space is an absolute fixed empty and infinite container. Space is NOT an absolute fixed empty and infinite container, that notion is pure abstract idealization that allows us to speak instead in terms of ‘what things do’ as if space is populated by local, independently-existing ‘things-in-themselves’ and as if we are local, independently-existing intelligent-machines-in-ourselves that jockey about and interact in an absolute space and time reference frame-cum-operating theatre.

Ok, that is how the majority of people in our society seem to want to continue to understand ‘dynamics’, to ignore ‘transformation’ and to see dynamics in the reductionist terms of ‘what thing-in-themselves do’. What’s good enough for Moses and General Bullmoose should be good enough for everyone, right?

But what does all this have to do with ‘violence’? Well, ‘violence’ is also where one sees ‘dynamics’ NOT in terms of transformation but in terms of ‘what things do’.

In the transformational view, the veins and arteries and organs of of infrastructure are continually transforming. As in the case of the mom&pop truckstop cafe operator, the real physical case of the continuing transformation of the relational space we live in, the infrastructure can be ‘pulled out from beneath one’s feet’ and given over to ‘insiders’. A crony collective constituted by 1% of the population could pull the rug out from beneath the feet of the other 99%. You can’t ‘catch this’ by focusing on ‘what things in themselves do’, you can only see what is going on if you acknowledge that the real physical dynamic is the transformation of the relational space we all share inclusion in.

But the laws are written in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’ which is blind to the real physical dynamics of relational-spatial transformation and so the laws don’t ‘catch this’. Worse than that, the laws are enforced by violence so that they use violence to protect this transformation based pulling the rug from beneath the feet of those not in the insider crony alliance.

This ‘pulling the rug out’ seems like violence, but one only sees it [one only traps it] if one views dynamics in terms of transformation rather than in terms of ‘what things do’.

Does this have anything to do with the article's following comment?

“... we have been taught to “see” violence there and ignore it elsewhere, a point Brian Traven elaborated in one of the few moments of the debate that directly touched on the question of how we define violence, and how a seemingly semantic argument has grave implications for the disenfranchised”

Of course it does.

The physical real dynamic is transformation and Western laws and justice, which are violence backed, are architected to manage dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’. While we look at the Cadillac factory in the sense of ‘what those guys out there are doing’, our pocket may be being picked from behind our back. The real physical dynamic is the terrain transforming and by new infrastructure being laid down over top of the prior layer that is now expiring. With every such cycle of transformation, the new infrastructure is being taken control of by smaller and smaller crony alliances of more and more wealthy and powerful insiders, with the backing of law enforcement violence.

“In terms of the ways in which the machine altered our relations to one another and ourselves, it mattered not in the least whether it turned out cornflakes or Cadillacs.” --- Marshall McLuhan, ‘Understanding Media’

The violence inherent in law enforcement, law that orients to ‘what things-in-themselves do’ and blinds itself to ‘transformation of the relational space we all share inclusion in’, is politically correct violence. The violence of those who would seek to resist the injustice built into Western Justice system is politically incorrect violence.

As Mach observed, well before McLuhan, the influence of the dynamics of the inhabitants are ‘laundered out’ in that they condition the ‘dynamics of the habitat’ which in turn condition the dynamics of the inhabitants. The dynamics of the Cadillac factory are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat they are included in at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants [as the mom&pop truckstop cafe operator is only too painfully aware]. This physical reality can be used to ‘pull the rug out from under the feet of selected others’ [non-insider others] with the backing of the violence of law enforcers.

What distinguishes this fully legal and government backed violence from ‘bully manipulation’? Nothing other than the common belief, in Western civilization, that our idealization of dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’, which is built into our institution of justice, equates to physical reality. Concepts that are based on nothing other than common belief are ‘secularized theological concepts’. Viewing dynamics in terms of ‘what things-in-themselves do’ is a ‘secularized theological concept’. Our laws are based on this concept and the violence used to back up the laws therefore derives from a ‘secularized theology’.

The automatic political correctness stamp of approval on law enforcement violence is thus a religious belief in the same category as God punishing sinners. This is delusion, of course, but it happens to be delusion that has been built into Western civilization, and is accepted and supported without question by the [hopefully shrinking] majority.

p.s. re my remarks on the huge reaction against yunel escobar and his ‘tu ere malicon’ in his eye-black.

my point is to do with the folly of trying to manage the transformation of social dynamics by trying to manage ‘what things do’. in other words, i am leaving the question of qualitative judging of ‘what escobar did’ out of it. the issue i am orienting to is the common practice of managing ‘what things do’ while the real damage is being done via the manipulation of spatial relations. if escobar had an apartment to rent or employment to give and he felt himself to be part of a hetero insider club and religiously favoured his insider cronies in the renewing of spatial-relational ‘infrastructure’, a practice that can only isolate and disopportunize non-insiders and make them seem like a breed of outcasts that invite dogs to bark and delinquents to attack, then such ‘relational’ manipulations would surely contribute to homophobia. but such laundered practices are pervasive so ‘the management net’ has whale-sized holes it because it blinds itself to what transpires in the relational transformation realm.

meanwhile, we move towards ‘zero tolerance’ in the ‘what things do’ management orientation and are chasing around in and out of the whale sized holes in the net wielding minnow nets with ever-finer mesh to ensure that we do not let anything that is offensive in the ‘what things-in-themselves do’ category get by us.

the same principle is in operation re the politically incorrect black bloc violence.

the continually transforming ‘infrastructure’ is where this isolating of selective groups takes place, whether it is to progressively isolate, empower and enrich an insider group such as the 1%, or whether it is to progressively isolate, disempower and alienate an outsider group that is non-hetero or non-hedgian.

this is the trouble with 'purificationists'. on the surface, 'they are clean'; i.e. in terms of 'what they do' that others can observe, they are clean and not like escobar or the black bloc [i am speaking here only in the sense of what is overt versus covert, not the 'right and wrong' of it]. but 'purificationists' know how to manage their image while manipulative exercising their influence through the relational-transformation realm which is where things really physically happen.

a Working Class Hero is something to be. There's room at the top I'm telling you still But first you must learn how to smile as you kill If you want to be like the folks on the hill." ---John Lennon

by appealing to the public through 'what things do' actions and arguments that 'look good' on the surface and present well in the mainstream media, as hedges urges, we continue to support and sustain a system where 'what is really going on' remains covert.

"p.s. re my remarks on the huge reaction against yunel escobar and his ‘tu ere malicon’ in his eye-black.

my point is to do with the folly of trying to manage the transformation of social dynamics by..."

Blah, blah, blah. I see right through you Emile. You're a closet Blue Jays fan admit it. Probably one of about a dozen left on earth. Not even John Lennon quotes can shield you now. Defending homophobia just to stand by a terrible baseball team, for shame.